I guess I am probably fairly typical of many home computer users - retired but have used the large zoo animals for many years.

I have a network consisting of a main PC running Windows XP (2.4ghz "gb ram) , ADSL broadband connection , two network printers (one on HP Jetdirect and one on Linksys PSUS4) , a wireless access point , a Netgear SC101 network disk system ( 120gb mirror) and an OLD Laptop also running Windows XP but struggling. (Gateway Solo 5150 PII 300mhz 228mb ram)

I thought that one of the linux varieties might make life easier and so took advise from an old colleague who said try one of the Ubuntu flavours or if I wanted a more "windowsy" system try Puppy Linux. My friends and most if not all web searches indicated that my Puppy (or any other linux) would not be able to access and share Windows created files on the SC101 network disk - I accepted this BUT JOY of JOYs they were all wrong.

So what we now have is:
1) dual boot WindowsXP / Puppy Linux on the laptop - installation made much simpler by the excellent Forum Post entitled "Dual Boot Windows/Puppy install Documentation" . My thanks to JVR for that

2) Sucessful connection to the network - by direct Lan it was so easy but my wireless connection was harder and the dialogue boxes here could be clearer - putting all the dialogue in one window instead of sequencing the operation can lead to confusion. Still all done and up and running.

3) Access to both network printers was a very simple CUPS operation - not the best or clearest dialogue boxes to be sure but adequate.

4) Download and install of Firefox and Thunderbird both straight forward but messy to get them onto the desktop - Puppy could do with a drag and drop > put shortcut here tool - Yes I know very Windowsy but not everything out of the Bill Gates stable is bad.

5) Interesting that in Puppy Control Panel under drives there is a button called WinLan but a search of the forum does not throw up any useful information - however using the said WinLan feature it was easy to see how many stupid shares I had open on my Windows PC so I closed most of them. Then the problem began - I could connect to my shares but could not access them - always a permissions error.

After I worked out that my Windows login had no password I added one and all my shares were accessible.

6) Purely out of interest I decided to share the Netgear SC101 network disk one my Windows PC - really a waste of time because the Netgear software was already on the Windows version on the laptop. However the share popped up in Pnethood and low and behold it worked.

Ok so there is the limitation that a windows PC needs to be up and running to provide the Share of the SC101 but IT WORKS.

After all this where to now:
Well the Puppy is a really nice pet - quite well behaved and no messes on the carpet. It was not hard to install and even a Puppy newbie like myself has been able to install a moderately complex network setup and make most of it work.

I still have to experiment with Puppy applications and get my head round the somewhat wierd names that linux people use for things and I still have to make file shares on the Puppy so my Windows PC can see them but all in all setting up the Puppy was a rewarding experience and certainly one which other potential newbies should not be afraid of.

My Thanks to all the Forum contibutors without whom we would be telling a much sadder story.

I guess I am probably fairly typical of many home computer users - retired but have used the large zoo animals for many years.

I have a network consisting of a main PC running Windows XP (2.4ghz "gb ram) , ADSL broadband connection , two network printers (one on HP Jetdirect and one on Linksys PSUS4) , a wireless access point , a Netgear SC101 network disk system ( 120gb mirror) and an OLD Laptop also running Windows XP but struggling. (Gateway Solo 5150 PII 300mhz 228mb ram)

I thought that one of the linux varieties might make life easier and so took advise from an old colleague who said try one of the Ubuntu flavours or if I wanted a more "windowsy" system try Puppy Linux. My friends and most if not all web searches indicated that my Puppy (or any other linux) would not be able to access and share Windows created files on the SC101 network disk - I accepted this BUT JOY of JOYs they were all wrong.

So what we now have is:
1) dual boot WindowsXP / Puppy Linux on the laptop - installation made much simpler by the excellent Forum Post entitled "Dual Boot Windows/Puppy install Documentation" . My thanks to JVR for that

2) Sucessful connection to the network - by direct Lan it was so easy but my wireless connection was harder and the dialogue boxes here could be clearer - putting all the dialogue in one window instead of sequencing the operation can lead to confusion. Still all done and up and running.

3) Access to both network printers was a very simple CUPS operation - not the best or clearest dialogue boxes to be sure but adequate.

4) Download and install of Firefox and Thunderbird both straight forward but messy to get them onto the desktop - Puppy could do with a drag and drop > put shortcut here tool - Yes I know very Windowsy but not everything out of the Bill Gates stable is bad.

5) Interesting that in Puppy Control Panel under drives there is a button called WinLan but a search of the forum does not throw up any useful information - however using the said WinLan feature it was easy to see how many stupid shares I had open on my Windows PC so I closed most of them. Then the problem began - I could connect to my shares but could not access them - always a permissions error.

After I worked out that my Windows login had no password I added one and all my shares were accessible.

6) Purely out of interest I decided to share the Netgear SC101 network disk one my Windows PC - really a waste of time because the Netgear software was already on the Windows version on the laptop. However the share popped up in Pnethood and low and behold it worked.

Ok so there is the limitation that a windows PC needs to be up and running to provide the Share of the SC101 but IT WORKS.

After all this where to now:
Well the Puppy is a really nice pet - quite well behaved and no messes on the carpet. It was not hard to install and even a Puppy newbie like myself has been able to install a moderately complex network setup and make most of it work.

I still have to experiment with Puppy applications and get my head round the somewhat wierd names that linux people use for things and I still have to make file shares on the Puppy so my Windows PC can see them but all in all setting up the Puppy was a rewarding experience and certainly one which other potential newbies should not be afraid of.

My Thanks to all the Forum contibutors without whom we would be telling a much sadder story.

Hello, I have some suggestions about puppy, and I hope you can do something about it.

First of all, I'm kinda newbie in this linux stuff, at least I know something about the terminal, but I don't know very much (and I dont want to). But I know a lot about computers, and googling, and windows, so I consider myself something more than the "aimed user" of this OS. I always try to solve the problems by myself. Enough of that.

Secondly, this was tried with a very much older version, I think from 2008, let's say november - dicember 2008 (I think it was 4.00) Maybe you have already done something about this.

Real start:
======
_________________________
I only wanted to do a hard drive install, not frugal, but the full one, but it was too dificult for me. I couldn't install lilo or grub correctly.
It is posible that my computer was broken, but i couldnt do it.

Then I tried frugal. It installed but I couldn't get the machine to boot correctly, I still needed the cd.

So I said fuck linux, and attempted to install W98 (yes, you may hate me XD). Unfortunately, it had a weird error that i couldn't configure the clock (bad download ). Then I got angry and let the dust take care of that shitty computer.

The important thing is that what I was looking for was a O.S that when you turn the computer on, it boots normally. I dont want to boot from USB or disket, cd or whatever, I have a HDD... And I want to use it.

I think this OS wasn't designed with the focus on that. Instead, it seems that you put a lot more effort on the cd that loads to ram, the usb, etc.

It really needs something more automatic to install lilo or brub. Or something more intuitive.
I dont want to have windows and linux at the same time on that old computer. I want only one OS, and to boot from the HDD.

Also, It stinks that you have to put the cd and wait to load the OS to look in the menu for the script to install puppy in the HDD. You should really do something without the graphical einvorement. Something that makes posible to simply install puppy in your HDD, like when you install windows. That way it wouldn't need to load all the menues, windows, etc. to the ram, and you could install it simplier and much faster.

So it should have somehting like an option, to select if you have only this linux, or you wanna do an install for various OS.

I would love to see at the begining, when it ask for a command, something to install, or an option like "try puppy from CD (or whatever)" and under that "install puppy". And everything else that it may need to ask for.

I am using Puppy Linux version 4.2.1, which worked great "out-of-the-box". Use Puppy on a 2nd-hand Dell Latitude C600 to connect wirelessly to internet. Have flirted briefly with Fedora and Ubuntu, but Puppy is the only distro that worked right off the bat with my Ativa Wireless G card, which was the whole point. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I am too damn stubborn to just go out and buy a different wireless card!)

As a newbie, when problems occur, it is hard to determine whether a) I am an idiot, or b) something in Puppy could be easier, clearer, or more user friendly. (More often than not, it turns out that I am an idiot.)

Biggest problem with Puppy? Puppy moves so fast that documentation and forums have a hard time keeping up. I might find a solution on a forum, but it applies to a previous version of Puppy, and things have changed so much that it is no longer relevant.

That said, I love Puppy! I love the small size, ability to use live CD or install to HD, and that Puppy is ready to go as soon as the ISO is copied to a CD. (The concepts of iso, distro, live CD, etc. are all new to me. Kids, I learned to program in Fortran and Cobol on PUNCH CARDS in the 1970's! Look that up in your Funk & Wagnall's! I have never been a programmer, sys admin, or otherwise directly involved with computers except as a user.)

My biggest issue is with the Unix/linux file system, which is just a learning curve. That, and the tarball thing. Nothing Puppy specific.

Why linux at all? Tired of the MS Windows game of increasingly bloated OS's requiring more RAM, HD capacity and processor speed. Plus the broken promise of every new Windows OS being less crappy/bug ridden and more secure than the previous version. Barry Kauler et al have put the Redmond gang to shame.

Just finished spending 1.5 days getting PL to work on a Fujitsu Lifebook, Crusoe cpu, 256 MB ram, 20 g drive. Was running Xubuntu on it, but too slow, so tried to replace with a full PL install. Spent all day yesterday trying to get grub to run, but could never get the menu.lst to run at all, and when I tried to use the interactive grub, just got errors. Gave up on that. Reinstalled Xubuntu, then did a frugal PL install, and modded the Xubuntu menu.lst and all worked fine. Was using "vga=normal" all along...

I run ubuntu 9.04 (64 bit) on a desktop, and was years ago an Unix sys manager, but have had to reacquaint myself with Unix/Linux.

Will use the laptop as a travel machine, so don't need to do heavy work with it, but until I feel comfortable with PL, will keep the Xubuntu as well.

Reactions so far:
1. Full install seems to have some deep bugs, at least on the Fujitsu, in getting it to boot.
2. Install/update of software still requires major unix smarts, could be easier without becoming Win-like.
3. Runs very well on old hardware, but ubuntu did too, just slow.
4. And last, after I registered to join this forum, Firefox crashed when transferred back to the login page, and would not restart, requiring a reboot. Very strange...

I have an old laptop that came with windows 95. It has a usb port, but I could never get it to work with a flash drive, and I couldn't find drivers for my wireless ethernet adapter. I ran puppy live from CD and immediately I could use the usb for anything and my wireless just worked.

However, at home I can't connect my laptop wirelessly, so most of my annoyances and hurdles with Puppy have been trying to find files I need without the direct connection. It took me some digging to find a version of WINE for Puppy, more digging to find and download dotpuphandler, which I needed to install/upgrade freetype - another problem I had to dig for with fonts in WINE looking distorted or blurry. Thankfully, a post with links to freetype and webcore fonts cleared the problem up.

If not for my friend telling me about WINE, I would never even have considered using Puppy, regardless of the fact that I can have both OS's installed, it's too cumbersome for me to go back and forth between windows and puppy; I'd rather have my few windows apps just work in puppy. Anyway, I wonder if more people would give puppy a chance if they knew WINE to be a viable option for windows programs that don't have a linux alternative, with a link provided for the latest WINE pet package.

i don't know if this is really the sort of thing to go in this thread - or even whether it is a problem with puppy, xorg, or jwm - but one thing that really bugs me about puppy is that despite being 'marketed' to people with old machines, it assumes a high resolution display.

my laptop runs at 1024x768, but a lot of dialog boxes are far too big to fit on the screen. this means i can't read what is at the bottom of the window or, for example, what the button options are. the box can't be resized, and maximising it simply widens the little bit i can read. the only way out is to hit Enter and hope that the button i have just selected is the right one. it happened to me just now when i tried to install the java-jdk.

in an otherwise great OS, it is incredibly frustrating!

EDIT: and it's just happened again. seeing as i've spent the best part of 5 hours downloading packages for some university work, the fact that there might be huge dependency problems simply because i couldn't read the bottom of a dialog box or see a button saying "fix this!" is so utterly depressing it's almost funny. i note there is an option in the menu to check dependencies. however, i can't use this as, guess what? the list in the box disappears off the bottom of the screen and is not scrollable or resizable. joy!

is something like this really so hard to fix? i doubt puppy will be a viable alternative to windows until it discovers scroll bars!Last edited by ssme on Wed 10 Jun 2009, 22:03; edited 2 times in total

As a first time linux user, I am very impressed by how painless you made everything so far. The manual on how to get puppy running off a disc and install it onto my hard drive were clear, concise and helpful and you were kind enough to include the drivers and apps I needed to get onto these forums. So overall, I'm saying fantastic job so far.

I did notice something of concern. In the "How to get Puppy" section of the manual, there is a dead link to an application "md5sum.exe". I also don't think this application is needed, I was able to burn a boot disc without it just fine.

(b) Use Xfe to navigate to the folder [perhaps a /00 folder you made to which you download files?] holding the file [PET or ISO?]

(c) Open a terminal window in that folder by clicking the terminal icon in the Xfe toolbar.

(d) Type the first few characters and hit [tab] twice to obtain a completed md5sum command entry, then type the first few characters of the filename [case is important] and hit [tab] twice to complete the filename, then hit [Enter] to have the command act upon the file of that name in that folder.

Hi I am a newby to linux though a windows certified professional. I have been trying to get started with linux the last two years. But somehow I seemed to have an unlucky configuration on both my laptop and desktop. Especially my laptop which is "specially designed for windows XP" turns out to be totally resistant to linux.

On both only a few different live cd's worked, but on installing them I met so much resistance that I gave up after weeks of struggle. I can not say that linux is that more difficult, it has her own ways, you need to get used to. The frustrating thing is, I don't mind investing in learning to get around in Linux, but I don't want to spent weeks to get it going. Until now I was very frustrated that I could not get linux going except on some live CD's. I really like Ubuntu, but is does not seem to like me.

Well yesterday after failing Wubi to run, I tried Portable Ubuntu for Windows which ran but slow. I then by accident stumbled on Puppy linux on distrowatch.com. I really liked the idea of being able to kick start linux from cd and further on use faster disks. As I see it Puppy Linux has 2 major applications

1 - a small but very versatile and complete OS
2 - a very easy to set up OS that hardly needs installation

After frustrations of stranding in sight of the harbour, Puppy linux was a complete surprise. To my delight it played music and movies out of the box. My USB-hardisk was recognised, My display (1360x768) worked straight out of the box. Internet didn't (Can be problem for total newbies) but I got it going fairly quickly. In fact everything is working perfectly. I only have to figure out how to get my printer going.

Not only is it working (and delightfully fast), but I noticed that the interface is quite good with a lot of attention to detail from the perspective of the power user. (For total newbies I think Ubuntu has created an excellent design hiding the more complicated stuff.)

Well to make a long story short, I Love it!

Finally I have Linux system I explore. I must say, it really has a good feel to it. I think the applications are an excellent amazing collection, considering the small space they use.

For my purpose a small footprint is not a mayor priority. I hope to be able to install the new Open office in full (can I?), because I want to get deep into that. If this is not possible I'll accept because puppy is very special distro. I tried the openoffice 2.2 cutdown version but I could not get database to work. It said it was missing JRE. When I installed JRE, it still could not find it. I do not know how to fix it. It gets to complicated.

Overall I like it very much. If you want to know what are minor letdowns for a windows user:

- the file structure is complicated and you have to get used to it.
- applications don't seem to remember last opened folder or to default to folders. So I have to walk the difficult path over and over.
- For instance I have not been able to find the desktop folder yet
- Making shortcuts to the desktop with the contextmenu would be fine
- I would like to be able to play all songs in a folder, but it seems I have to make a playlist, but when I finally figured that out, I could not find the desktop to put it there.
- windows do not remember their previous position

little errors I found
- full screen does not work with the media player
- uninstall of packages often fails to work, I found, it works best if you click on the right side for some reason

Unfortunatelly I can not boot puppy on my laptop, when it reaches the point, I need to confirm my mouse-connection by pressing <Enter>, my keyboard does not work (suggestions?). Well I am used to my laptop resisting linux.

But generally, I must say the impression is very good and it is well thought through. My sincere compliments and gratitude to Barry and all of you contributing to this excellent distro.

[Suggestion: It might be a good idea to mention Puppy Linux on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wubi_(Ubuntu) as a similar project. I think Puppy linux is an excellent alternative to wubi. There are a lot of people who want to get handson experience on linux without repartitioning their harddrive. A Live CD is nice but the constant spinning up and down gets disturbing and somewhat worrying after a while.]

2. "uninstall of packages often fails to work"
When all else fails...
The way that ALWAYS works...
Is to restore a backup that was [intentionally?] made just prior to the install.
Of the partition if the installation is on a partition.
Of the "pup_save" file if installed packages are held there.
To make backups I use Pudd, Xfe, for Linux partitions...
The FREE version of SyncBack->[run under WINE] for Windows partitions.[/url]

2. "uninstall of packages often fails to work"
When all else fails...
The way that ALWAYS works...
Is to restore a backup that was [intentionally?] made just prior to the install.
Of the partition if the installation is on a partition.
Of the "pup_save" file if installed packages are held there.
To make backups I use Pudd, Xfe, for Linux partitions...
The FREE version of SyncBack->[run under WINE] for Windows partitions.[/url]

Thanks for the information. By the way I did manage to uninstall them all after a few attempts, Today I tried again to install and uninstall packages and it works fine. I think the problems are due to me heavely testing the interface and change all sort of things one after another without rebooting.Last edited by Lasker on Sat 13 Jun 2009, 07:59; edited 1 time in total

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